New Release Of CA’s Unicenter Service Catalog Helps Enable It Managers To Define And Deliver It Services In Business Terms

CA, Inc. (NYSE: CA) today announced a new release of Unicenter Service Catalog that helps enable IT managers to define and deliver IT services in business terms.

Poor alignment between IT services and business objectives undermines total returns on technology investments, and contributes to end-user dissatisfaction and lost productivity. To avoid these problems, IT organizations need to communicate with business decision-makers in terms they can readily understand.

Unicenter Service Catalog r11.2 addresses this challenge by providing a centralized source of information for all services-ensuring that business users have an accurate, consistent view of all available IT services. By keeping IT informed about who is requesting and consuming resources-as well as the frequency with which they’re doing so-Unicenter Service Catalog r11.2 also aids in demand planning and allocation.

“A service catalog is one of the most important elements of Service Level Management, as it allows IT to act as a true service provider,” said Harry K. Butler, III, support center manager of military electronics leader EFW. “Unicenter Service Catalog enables us to streamline IT service delivery and keep resource allocation well-aligned with business needs by providing the business with a clearly defined ’menu’ of available services and associated costs.”

Support for Expanded Role of Service Catalog in ITIL v3

Unicenter Service Catalog r11.2 has been architected to help fulfill the requirements for the new expanded role of the Service Catalog in ITIL v3. In v3, Service Catalog is elevated to a separate process reflecting the importance of the process-making it the primary interface by which services to users are requested, managed, and delivered.

Unicenter Service Catalog r11.2 also enhances service delivery by enabling customers to define service level agreements, initiate manual and automatic notification of catalog requests, attach appropriate documents to requests, and generate a variety of management reports. Additional enhancements include:

An easy-to-use “web store” interface that simplifies the process of searching catalogs, requesting services, managing existing requests, and reviewing request histories
Custom forms that streamline the request, approval and fulfillment processes by automatically capturing user information, simplifying data entry
Template workflows that can be configured to enforce rules and policies-such as preventing service desk tickets from being generated for services that have not yet received required approvals
“As a managed services provider, CompuCom Systems is always looking for ways to help clients get the most business value from their technology investments,” said Josh Gervey, Enterprise Management practice director at CompuCom. “The new release of CA Unicenter Service Catalog r11.2 enables us to fulfill this goal by making it easier for business users to access the specific services they need-while helping IT staffs to avoid investing time and effort into activities that won’t have any substantive impact on line-of-business performance.”

CA Technology Services provides CA Service Management Process Maturity Analyses and CA Unicenter Service Catalog Readiness Assessments, along with expert deployment services. These services help customers plan their implementation of service management around ITIL best practices, using Unicenter Service Catalog to automate the request process.

New Release of Unicenter Service Accounting Also Support ITIL v3

CA also announced a new release of Unicenter Service Accounting that enables financial accountability by providing budgeting and planning controls and costing based on actual IT service usage. Release 11.2 provides detailed metrics regarding consumption of IT resources across the enterprise and translates that consumption into accurate cost data. Enterprises can use this data to ensure the alignment of expenditures with business priorities and to implement chargebacks where appropriate. Unicenter Service Accounting r11.2 also includes support for French, German, and Simplified Chinese operating systems, along with workflow controls for financial approvals.

Financial Management is a fundamental element of the Service Strategy book in ITIL v3. It requires that the financial model adopted by the IT organization be transparent to the rest of the business and that it be applied consistently throughout the service lifecycle. Unicenter Service Accounting helps fulfill these ITIL v3 requirements by enabling IT organizations to identify, budget and allocate all costs associated with any service based on a customer-defined financial model.

Unicenter Service Catalog and Unicenter Service Accounting are components of CA’s Service Level Management solution which simplifies the process of negotiating, defining, managing and improving the quality of IT services.

“Organizations need to ensure their IT spend is directed where it will do the most good and deliver the best returns,” said David Hurwitz, vice president of product marketing at CA. “CA’s Unicenter Service Catalog and Unicenter Service Accounting uniquely enable the business and IT staff to work cooperatively and implement best practices that optimize IT spending.”